I'm a rookie app developer that is just getting my first apps in various app stores. The development road was long and hard and now it seems like a lot of my ad network have not been set up properly by outsources.
At this stage....I'm super confused and just want to ensure that my apps are getting the maximum fill rates on their ads. I will figure out the rest as I move along but finding someone that can help "check if things are operating correctly" has been fruitless to date. I've gone through every member of my mastermind group - asked my development team - reached out to the briefest acquaintances and fallen on my sword......
At this stage, I just need to be pointed in the direction of the best read or person to give me a hand and get things at least set up properly......while I catch up and learn more about it.
It's been a long road to get here and I realize I'm behind on this side of the app business equation. Any help would be greatly appreciated Clarity community!!!!
Join an incubator program. Many of them have direct connects with media outlets and global news stations. If you are on the West Coast, I recommend, www.desarrollode.org or 500 start ups.
Well first of all what I would recommend you is not to worry about the monetization side of things but worry about building a great app. Worry about getting users on board and keeping them happy. You can't monetize without having any users. I noticed most people have 10,000 impressions a day and are worrying about monetizing that. For Mopub the best thing to do is just contact them. I'm sure the guys at Mopub will be more than willing enough to help you out.
Real Talk: Mopub's support sucks, so I completely understand your hesitation. Here's what you need to know.
1. You're going to get medium to good fill rates in Tier 1 countries. US/UK/AUS/CA and maybe a few others in Europe and Japan. Other than that, expect to see huge variance (0%-90% depending on day). When you blend all that together, you'll never get 99% fill even with MoPub's marketplace. Just keep that in mind when you're pulling your hair out looking at your MP dashboard.
2. Setup Backfill/house ads in your mopub account to help solve this as much as you can. This will get your fill rate up, though for some reason it never seems to work as well as it should. Two options on this: 1 is that you cross promote your own games, 2 is that you use creative from a major game (Candy Crush etc) and wrap that creative with a custom affiliate link that you get from an affiliate market place. If you dont know what that is, check out OfferVault or NeverBlue and you'll see what I mean (basically they put their CPI bids on the open market and you can use that as you choose). This will make your backfill campaigns highly effective - I can often 3x the market eCPM by doing this on remnant inventory.
3. Mediate as many networks as you can. Sign up for all the networks that MoPub offers and use them to mediate with. Again, this isn't perfect, but could help. Make sure you keep eCPM floors at $0.05 with everything (not $0.01, that just destroys your eCPM with negligible effect on fill rates)
4. If you are in Games, MoPub is probably a good choice for now, but if you are ANYTHING else other game games, go to AdMob. Fill rates are infinitely better and your eCPM will be 5x. They also allow for mediation.
5. iOS will be much better than Android
6. Realize that high fill rates are often a farce and what ad networks sell you is rarely what you'll see. Don't get hung up on getting max fill rates and focus on how to surgically build a geo-targeted ad solution using one of these platforms. It's a lot easier than you think, often can be done in the custom setup of your account.
Good luck!
Carter
